Riviera Still Eluding Bankruptcy

LAS VEGAS-Riviera Holdings Corp. this week reported another miserable quarter for its nameplate resort here and said it continues to work on restructuring $281 million debt such that it can avoid filing for protection from creditors under Ch. 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code. The locally based company has been in default of its credit agreement for most of the year.

Riviera Holdings own the Riviera hotel-casino in Las Vegas and the Riviera hotel-casino in Black Hawk, Co. Thanks to continued poor performance in Las Vegas, the company produced a net loss of $4.7 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $3.5 million in the same year-earlier period, despite $1.3 million of net operating income from its Colorado property, an 8.3% increase from the year-earlier period attributable to increased casino revenue.

In Las Vegas, the company produced a loss from operations of $700,000, which is a 404% turnaround from $200,000 of income from operations in the same year-earlier period. The decrease was primarily attributed to a 25% drop in net revenue to $22.6 million from $30.2 million on an across-the-board drop in revenues. Operating margin for the property was negative at 3.1%; in the same year-earlier period the margin was a positive 0.8%.